Getting Through the Dark Times: Four Foundational Practices

When the mother of evolution decides that one human race is over and another has to be born urgently for there to be any hope for humanity at large, there is only one thing that we can do. Get with her program through aligning ourselves with clarity, spiritual practice and sacred action.

Other teachers sell popcorn, but I have never been one of those teachers. I have found that true hope is born of the other side of devastating despair, and real purpose arises when all false illusions are burnt away.

These are hard, brutal terrifying times in which the possibilities of the birth of unprecedented fascism and the destruction of democracy are becoming ice clear. There is absolutely no point in turning away from this tragic truth and there is equally no point in allowing it to paralyze you.

So the question poses itself, how do we get through this? How do we respond in a dignified way when the dignity of everything we love including truth itself is being systemically destroyed? We have never had to ask ourselves this question as intensely as we do now and our answers to it will determine the quality and reality of our lives. 

This getting through requires four different kinds of practice that need to be part of everyone’s daily working now.

Practice One:

Look at what’s happening without any illusion. This builds courage and allows you to prepare yourself for what is ahead.

Practice Two:

Practice imageless meditation, which allows you to establish a gap between yourself and your reactions so that whatever happens, you can remain steady.

Practice Three:

Keep saying the name of God, so that if events become too agonizing to bear, you can turn through the power of the name to the source of all peace and all joy and find a strength beyond yourself in that part of your deepest self that is one with the Divine.

Practice Four:

Understand that however dreadful the world becomes, you can still live a sacred life by treating every meeting and every moment as an occasion to practice gratitude and compassion. This is a very austere practice because it demands selflessness, and it has nothing whatever to do with whether you are happy or not.

It has everything to do with an implacable determination not to abandon your humanity even if others do and to treat others with respect and awareness of their secret divinity, even if they are behaving psychotically.

All four of these practices are demanding and there is absolutely no way you can be of use in this terrible time if you do not choose a rigorous spiritual discipline as the essential foundation of your life.

Don’t imagine that simply because you are turning up for the divine your life, you will be in any way privileged or specially protected. That is a vanity of the ego. What is required of you is to turn up for love and justice for the sake of love and justice and not for any of the narcissistic rewards that false teachers and idiotic spiritual systems have promised.

The rigor I am speaking of is the training ground for the new species and the savagery and horror of the crisis are the necessary conditions for its potential emergence. See this unsentimentally and you have a chance of not being shredded and shattered by what is unfolding.

In addition to these practices, for God’s sake, vote. For God’s sake, don’t close your eyes to what’s unfolding. For God’s sake, get real about much more serious practice. For God’s sake, do whatever you can with your resources and time to be of help and to act.

And for God’s sake, give up the fruits of action to the mystery into which each of us is now plunged in this amazing and terrible work.

I love you. I’m with you and I will be writing regularly out of this inferno to you.

See you very soon, 

Andrew

P.S. On Wednesday, September 23, I will explore the forces that conspired to initiate this global dark night, and how we can take clear, targeted action to move through it and create lasting, meaningful change. Join me here >>>